The next year or so, my life changed completely once again with the addition of Le’Nara in it. Where her sister had shown an unstoppable work attitude that was able to endure any effort or hardship, Le’Nara was just the opposite. Le’Nara showed an unstoppable talent at avoiding effort and hardship!

She slept late, even though she was had promised to meet me every morning and night for meals. Her way of keeping her promise? I was the one expected to fetch her meal from the kitchens, and then take it up to her room and wake her so we could eat together – and most mornings it was an effort to get her to wake up! She was always running behind, no matter where she was going, or what she was supposed to be doing.

I learned: If I wanted to meet Le’Nara to do something at mid-morn, it’d be closer to noon than morning before I’d see her. There weren’t any clocks in this world that I knew of, nor had I ever heard anyone mention seeing or having one, so no one tracked time precisely. People divided the day into segments based on the four quarters – morning, noon, evening, night, and then into halves of those quarters – mid-morn, mid-noon, mid-even, and mid-night.

Instead of making an appointment to meet someone at 9:00 in the morning, you’d agree to meet mid-morn and then one person might show up at 8:00 and have to wait until the other showed up at 10:00. There wasn’t any precise measurement of time for the common people (there were some hourglasses in the labs and such things, but those were reserved for the scholars, alchemists, or wizards), so most people had a very relaxed concept of time. Le’Nara’s concept was even more relaxed than most others were; a meeting with her that should take place at mid-morn would instead take place closer to noon by most people’s calculations.

She was always lagging behind!

When it came to classes, Le’Nara often didn’t come to classes. She’d rather run off and relax somewhere than attending class – with the exception of her magic class with Mother. Father tried to teach her fighting class, but it became more of a “Dammit boy! Go find her and draw her out here by the nipples if you need to!” class.

The fight with her and father every day was the fight of her running and hiding and avoiding father, and him chasing and trying to catch her. At first, I was on father’s side of the hunt as I dutifully went out after breakfast each morning to practice, expecting her to follow shortly; but over time Le’Nara dragged me over to her side instead. Where I’d started out with Father helping to hunt her, by the end of the year I was helping her run and hide from father instead!

I suppose it was still a training of sorts, but it wasn’t training with the blade anymore. Father thought she needed to learn to protect herself. Le’Nara thought it was too much work and would rather spend the morning chasing seagulls on the beach or rabbits through the forest. Her goal was to be a wizard and enjoy life, not be some idiot running around with a sword and letting people try to chop her in half – and she wasn’t the least bit shy in telling him that either!

Father and Le’Nara definitely had a love-hate relationship. She seemed to love to try and get him to hate her. Father could give the order, “JUMP”, and she’d jump once and then use it as an excuse to run away…

And mother found the whole struggle between the two of them to be quite amusing! Le’Nara was interested in mother’s teachings and always treated any order she gave as the absolute law. Mother’s word was as powerful to Le’Nara as God’s direct voice would be to his high priests. She absolutely refused to listen to Father, and obeyed mothered absolutely in her teachings.

And mother found that combination priceless. Le’Nara quickly became one of her favorite students. She was stubborn, energetic, brilliantly smart, and immensely talented at magic, taking to it as a fish takes to swimming lessons. By the end of her first year, Le’Nara was almost as talented with manipulating the flow of magic as some of the girls who were the second year students.

The only time which father seemed to have Le’Nara listen to him was mid-evening after supper. She frustrated him enough in the mornings, that most evenings she was the one he chose after supper to drag up into his office for an hour or so before night fell. From the way Le’Nara talked, father really was a dirty old geezer with ropes and blindfolds and all sorts of naughty things!

I don’t know if the rest of the girls got the ‘training’ she got, or if it was just father’s way of getting even with her for always skipping blade practice in the mornings, but it certainly sounded like she got a very intense lesson in love several times each week! Which, much to her credit, Le’Nara never complained over the “lessons” at all. De’Nara had been one of Father’s favorites, and now Le’Nara had fallen into that role as well.

Father truly was an old perverted geezer!

But though it all, Le’Nara filled an important empty space in my heart and helped settle the void left behind by her sister’s graduating. Where De’Nara had taught me the virtues of hard work and perseverance; Le’Nara taught me to relax, laugh, and enjoy life as it happened. We ran, hid, and skipped out on chores and lessons. We chased rabbits in the forest and snuck across the wall to the beach to dig crabs or collect seashells. Le’Nara was the one who taught me to swim, as most people tried to avoid going into the ocean due to the wildly unpredictable nature of the tides with the two moons.

De’Nara had shown me the value of work. Le’Nara showed me the value of play. Both of them left a deep mark on my heart and took a place in it that could never be filled by another. They were like the sun and the moon illuminating the darkness for my heart, and the two of them shaped me in ways they’ll never know, and I’ll always be grateful to them.

I suppose we can officially call Le’Nara the “second love” of my life. She truly had wiggled herself into my heart that soundly, and being around her filled me with laughter and warmth.

And then, my eleventh birthday arrived and the whole school closed for a week to celebrate it!

In this world, eleven was considered to be a time of change for both boys and girls. Many children thought about apprenticeships, schooling, or training at that point in their lives, and once they turned twelve they were free to try to follow the path they had chosen for themselves. Rare foods and delicacies from all around the world were cooked, brought in, or magically appeared at the school. People danced. There were fireworks and music; storytellers and dozens of merchant ships in the docks.

Merchants are odd folks when it comes to dealing with the school – they love to come and sell their goods to Mother, Father, and the students, but they never set foot off their ships and onto the island itself. In this world, a landowner has the right to set any and all rules concerning their land – much as if each landed lord was king of their country. When it comes to a merchant, the same rule applies to their ships. As long as a ship is in the ocean, the captain is the absolute ruler of that ship and all who boards it.

If father and mother were to suddenly decide, “All males not of the family bloodline and now enslaved,” then every male on the island would become a slave. By the same token, if I was to walk onto a merchant’s ship and the captain was to declare, “We’re drafting all males into service, get to work, you bums!”, he’d be in his legal rights to do so. His “land”, his word is law.

And thus, merchants who owned ships very seldom ever left their own boats when they docked on a landed lord’s property. Local laws and customs could change at the blink of an eye, and it was simply safer for them to remain on their own ships and keep safe. What if mother and father died today? What rules would I set for the island here tomorrow?

Landowners held great power, and as such it was always wise to keep yourself out of trouble and not expose yourself unnecessarily to their exercise of authority.

Of course, that didn’t mean they could anything they want and get away with it either. If a merchant were to kidnap me when I visited his ship, Mother would declare war on him and sink him to the bottom of the ocean. When one landowner disregards the privilege and authority of another, it can lead to the people of those lands going to war. Pirate and Merchant, they battled all the time in such manner.

And, it also worked the other way around. If we were suddenly to enslave every person who set foot on our island, the merchant would complain to the merchant’s guild and then no ships would stop anymore. There’d be an embargo, and they might even hire mercenaries to rescue their crew members.

Land ownership gave a lot of rights and authority, but it also had to be backed up by strength and power. It’s why many countries formed alliances, or why people joined guilds and such things. A balance between might and rights.

This ended up leading to the docks being full of all sorts of merchant ships during my eleventh birthday celebration, and yet none of them actually ended up coming ashore and joining us.

For me, who was originally from earth, it was quite a unique learning experience. It truly helped me appreciate how strong mother and father’s words were here on the island, and how strong-willed and stubborn Le’Nara was to argue and refuse to listen to father properly. If he suddenly decided to put her in shackles, sell her as a slave to a merchant, and be done with her, that was well within his rights – and truth be told, no one would probably ever say anything.

Our island was probably one of the safest places in the world. Mother was a high wizard of unfathomable strength. Father was a grandmaster of the blade. There were always at least sixty students at the school, all at various levels of learning, and a massive seawall encircled the whole island. In terms of raw potential power, my home was probably as frightening as any enemy army could be.

And yet, there was absolutely nothing of strategic value at all here. No gold mines, no ore, no large deposits of wealth or resources. We were in the middle of the ocean and didn’t block traffic anywhere, and people could easily sail around us and bypass our harbor. We had no harbor, no fleet, and mother and father had shown no interest in meddling in anyone else’s affairs.

Attacking my home would gain no one anything, and might cost them the world. I truly had been blessed to grow up in a place of complete safety, and my parent’s word was the law here. For Le’Nara to stand up and refuse father’s demands for her to attend class in the mornings – that took a strength of will and courage that I had never realized before.

It took my birthday celebration for me to learn of the merchants always staying on their ships, and for me to learn why they wouldn’t disembark. The knowledge I picked up from the experience changed how I viewed Le’Nara drastically. Before, I had just thought she was a carefree slacker who only wanted to do what she wanted to do. Now, I viewed her actions, and the strength it took to refuse father, in a completely different light.

She very well might be the bravest person I’ve ever met. Very likely, she’d be the bravest that I’d ever met in this world.

The eleventh birthday is all about opening one’s eyes and trying to decide the path they want to follow to become an adult, and I have to admit, it changed my outlook considerably. I may not know where or what path I’m going to try and follow in a year’s time, but I do know that I want to follow one with the determination and fortitude of De’Nara, and the warmth, laughter, and courage of Le’Nara.

My path to becoming a man, is based entirely off a desire to become more like the women around me?

Somehow, that seems oh so wrong! And yet, I couldn’t deny that it was the truth of what I felt.